Why You Have to Use the Standalone Google Contacts Page
Over the weekend, you may have heard the news about how Google finally assigned their standalone Gmail Contacts page a proper URL. Although the independent site has been available since fall of last year, it was previously somewhat hidden through an obfuscated URL. Now the site is online at google.com/contacts, a web address that's sure to encourage more people to use Google and/or Gmail to organize and maintain their address lists. What you may have not known about this special contacts page, however, is that it's actually the only usable place to organize your contacts within the Gmail system.
You may have skipped over this news thinking it of relatively minor importance. In the grand scheme of things, it is. But being a heavy Gmail user myself (and a somewhat obsessed online organizer of online data), it was great to hear that Google was focusing on improving the contacts experience. Let me explain.
You see, I haven't been able to actually use my contacts within Gmail for some time.
The problem stems from what is perhaps an overuse of the "Groups" feature on my part. Upon reaching a certain number of groups, a bug in the code for the Gmail contacts page prevents me from seeing the remaining groups available below a certain point on the dropdown list when I'm trying to add a contact to a group.
Here's an example (see the bottom of the groups list where it cuts off):
Because of this issue - a problem found both in Firefox and Google's own Chrome browser - the only way I could use the Contacts feature was via the hidden page.
On the standalone contacts page it works:
Without a handy URL to access this site, the only recourse was to bookmark the URL on all the home's computers. But if I ever strayed from my own machines, believe me that URL was quickly forgotten. Obviously, you can see why I cheered for the news about google.com/contacts.
Now that Google Contacts finally has a proper URL, maybe the company can focus on making the contact manager a bit more robust or even integrating it with Google Sync technology for easy import/export to your mobile devices. That would be impressive. Until then, it's nice to just be able to access this site with ease.
(By the way, Google Apps for your Domain users have to go here: https://www.google.com/contacts/a/YOURDOMAIN.TLD - sorry!)
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Is this the founder?
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Anyone know how to turn this on for Google Apps accounts? I go to the mentioned url (and replace YOURDOMAIN.TLD with my domain), but get the following message:
Service not available
This service is not enabled for [retracted. If you believe this is an error, please contact your domain administrator or try again with the following link.
I checked in the dashboard but didn't see any information about enabling it.
The standalone page is maybe a "sign" that there are things to come, and I think there is a lot to hope for. For example a merge function. I would allso like to see unsorted contacts.
The most annoying thing by far about Google Contacts is the inconveniently located "Add to this group" input box. I always, ALWAYS confuse it for the search. The standalone page makes it even worse by locating it farther away.
Until Google Contacts can automatically grab the contact information off people out of emails like phone #, etc. it's basically useless. It takes too long to type that information into the Contacts section.
They need a way to highlight content from Gmail, and then sync that with Contacts...
It's not working for my google account, and reports a invalid request error.
Sarah,
Just for future reference: You can use your favorite URL snipping service (that allows giving snipped URLs an alias).
My favorite has long been SnipURL because, unlike e.g. TinyURL, users can register to the service and both save manage their snipped URLs. .. And see stats on their usage + maybe most importantly export them (data portability is musch more important than most people think).
So, e.g. http://snurl.com/google-contacts takes you to the "obscure" address.
Pretty handy with many other obscure URLs (one's Google, Facebook or Plaxo profile, etc).
Sarah,
Regarding "even integrating it with Google Sync technology for easy import/export to your mobile devices"
I discovered Google.com/contacts this weekend to.. And I DID manage to sync it with my iphone contacts. Follow these steps:
1) Sync your iphone (via itunes) with your address book (I use a mac)
2) Export your (by now identical to your iphone contacts) address book contacts as a file and save it to your desktop. I used a little Mac app called "A to G" for this exporting, as it is mainly used to export contacts FROM a mac address book FOR USE in Gmail.
3) Open http://www.google.com/contacts....
4) Import the contact file you created in step 2
by now your iphone contacts are included IN your Google contacts, but some of your Google contacts are NOT YET included in your iphone contacts...
5) Play around for a little bit with your Google contacts, merging them when necessary...
6) When you are done with your playing & merging, just follow Googles instructions on Syncing your Iphone with your Google (Gmail they say) contacts. Instructions are still at:
http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138740&topic=14252
When you finish following this process, Sync will copy all your Google contacts (by now containing BOTH your iphone exported contacts AND your Google contacts) in your Iphone :-) Now the two lists of contacts are going to be identical :-)
keep in mind that only contacts that are in the "My Contacts" group will be used for the above process... So anything that you need, just copy it in this group.
The same method can be applied for the calendar sync
Hope that helped,
alex
I wish it would work for Google Apps/Domains... Google is understandably slower to roll features out to that service.
I see it posted in a few places that this should work for google apps users but it does not work for me. I always get a "Server error: Sorry, you've reached a login page for a domain that isn't using Google Apps. Please check the web address and try again."
To the poster above who says that Google "understandably" are slower to roll out features to google apps, I don't agree with this statement. I have the experimental options turned on in my domain admin panel so why don't I get the same features as the free users? I think google should improve their support of google apps, we are always the poor cousins and nothing ever works easily for us.
Uh, why didn't you just bookmark that URL with Delicious?
@Soren: They have implemented a merge feature already. I've been using it for probably a month now. Just click on between 2 and 10 contact entries that you want to merge and over in the right column, you will see a line that says "Merge these # contacts..." and Voila! Some behind-the-scenes Google magic will merge them.
Hate that groups bug, but I thought they also fixed that a while ago with a scroll bar, which is in your picture.
Just as Rates, after I try to log in from google.com/contacts I'm getting an "Invalid request" message; however, when I try to access google.com/contacts once again immediately after that, it works as if I had already logged in successfully (i.e., I get the normal Contacts page).
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